


Trust

by elumish



Series: Perceptive Reality [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s01e05 The Broca Divide, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-21 21:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel was talking about it like it was some sort of vaguely interesting lab result.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crime

**Author's Note:**

> This was a mess to write, and this came about basically just because of what was basically the worst scene in the entirety of the series, and the part where the writers really failed.

“You should have heard them.” Sam set her empty beer glass down on the bar counter, less gently than she had intended, and watched it wobble slightly before settling. Janet made a sympathetic noise from the stool next to her, but didn’t interrupt. “Daniel was talking about it like it was some sort of vaguely interesting lab result, like oh look, he’s raping a woman, how nice, and Colonel O’Neill wasn’t going to do anything to step in, and I couldn’t do anything without violating a direct order, and—”

“I know.”

Sam knew Janet knew, but she had to say it anyway, because otherwise this rant was going to come out in front of people who would be a lot less forgiving of her badmouthing a superior officer—her commanding officer. “I mean, what if it was Sha’re? Or Sarah? Or _me_?”

Janet took a dainty sip—because everything Janet did was dainty, when she wasn’t being the CMO of the SGC, and even sometimes when she was—of her beer, then said, “They would have stopped it if it was you.”

“Then why is it any different for that woman? Just because she’s”—this location wasn’t secure, no matter how loud it was—“not like us, it doesn’t mean she isn’t deserving of being saved from being _raped_.”

“I know.” Janet sighed. “If you’re planning on lodging a formal protest—”

“No.” She wasn’t going to go that far. She had considered it, but…the woman had been okay, in the end, and the problem with lodging a complaint like that, especially as a woman, was that it could ruin her career. A woman cries ‘officer allows rape’ and someone accuses her of fraternization, and then she’s out and the whole thing is cleaned up. And then where would she work?

And besides, she liked Daniel and Teal’c and even the Colonel, when he wasn’t being so…infuriating. It was just hard to accept being on a team with people she wasn’t sure she could count on to keep her from being raped if they thought it was necessary for the mission to succeed. 

“Why don’t you talk to one of them? Make sure they know?”

Now it was Sam who sighed. “Because this isn’t the kind of conversation you have with your commanding officer.” Or an alien.

“Daniel, then. Of anyone, he seems like he would be the most receptive.”

Sam wanted to give a childish answer to that— _but he said it was just what they did, bad, mean Daniel_ —but figured Janet was probably actually right. “Fine. I’ll do that.”

Janet smiled and waved over the bartender for another round of drinks. “That’s the spirit. Now let’s get drunk so we can forget the past few days.”

The bartender set down two more beers, and Sam lifted hers in toast, saying, “Amen to that.”

\--

Sam found Daniel in his office, his nose buried in a leather-bound notebook that looked like it had seen better days. He looked up when she knocked, his glasses sliding down his nose until he shoved them back up.

“I need to talk to you.”

He blinked at her like he had no idea where she had come from or if he had ever seen her before, which would have been worrying if it weren’t so Daniel. “Have you found something?”

“No.” She hesitated, embarrassment flooding her, but then she forced the words out. “I don’t think I can work on a team with people who are okay with rape.”

Daniel gaped at her. “Excuse me?”

“On the planet, with the woman—you were just willing to let her be raped, because…because you thought it was interesting.”

It took a second, and then all of the color drained from Daniel’s face. “Shit. _Shit._ I didn’t—”

“I know you thought of it as morally okay because that was how it used to work, but…it’s not. And guess what, Daniel, people do that now, too.”

He went, if possible, even paler. “I’m sorry. I—have you ever—”

Exasperation flooded her. “Why is it that men think that women have to have been raped for them to want to stop rape from happening? And no, but I’m a woman in the US military. I know a number of women who have been, and so do you, you just don’t know it.”

He grimaced. “You’re right. I just…archeologists have this tendency to ignore the morality of the times we study. Slavery or rape or…whatever, that’s just what happened during that time. It’s usually not worth it to think about it, and in fact, it clouds our view of what happened and turns it into being about morality instead of about fact.”

Sam sighed. “I understand that. I just don’t know if I can work with people that I can’t trust to see rape as a crime.”

“Shit, Sam.” Daniel rose, looking at her. “I do. I—it wasn’t meant to be like that. I guess I just didn’t think about it.”

“I know. I mean, I wasn’t surprised by the Colonel—he would do whatever it took to continue the mission—but you’re…you’re civilian.”

“Do you want me to talk to Jack? I know you wouldn’t want to, him being your commanding officer and all—though you still do seem to disagree with him sometimes—but I might be able to—”

Sam started shaking her head before he could finish the sentence. “No, that’s not a conversation worth having with the Colonel. I just…had to talk to someone on the team, and having this conversation with Teal’c didn’t seem like it would go particularly well.”

After a second, Daniel sigh, sinking back down in his seat. “Yeah, you’re probably right about that. I’ll…I’ll try to do better. In some ways, it’s—and this isn’t an excuse—but it’s odd being back on Earth. I forget things, sometimes, about how Earth works.”

That seemed hard to believe. “You’re an archeologist. Cultures are your thing. How can you forget how Earth works?”

“I thought I was never going home. Before Jack showed up a second time, I honestly thought I would be on Abydos for the rest of my life.” He said Abydos the way the Abydonians did, like someone who was talking about their homeland in English, words from their native tongue slipping through. “Things like rape tended not to happen there.”

That was a joke. “Rape happens everywhere, Daniel, people just don’t talk about it.” She shook her head. “Look, I don’t want to keep talking about this. I have work to do. I’ll see you later.”

She turned and walked out of the room, and behind her Daniel sat with his head in his hands, his breathing so loud she could hear it as she went.


	2. Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack couldn’t help but wonder if it was all his fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The previous chapter was originally going to be a one-shot, but then I decided it needed more.

“Jack.”

Jack looked up from the Froot Loops he had been contemplating just in time to see Daniel slide into the chair across from him in the commissary. “Daniel?”

Daniel leaned towards him. “We screwed up.”

Jack heaved a small sigh. “Daniel, the fact that we were infected by an alien virus isn’t our fault. We had no way of knowing.”

A half-second of confusion crossed Daniel’s face, and then he shook his head. “No, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

And Jack was officially out of patience for this conversation. They didn’t have a briefing for another three hours, and all he wanted to do was get back off-world. Preferably to somewhere he could shoot someone instead of turning into a Neanderthal. “Daniel, get to the point.”

“We said we were okay with a woman being raped.”

Oh, for the love of God. “Daniel—”

“We said we were okay with a woman being raped _to Captain Carter_.”

Shit. He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, not really, because it was the mission that mattered, but… “Daniel, she doesn’t think we’re actually okay with rape. She knows better.” Daniel looked away, just the slightest movement of his eyes, but it told Jack what he needed to know. Damn it, he had screwed that up. Having a woman on the team who thought he condoned rape was…maybe that was why she hadn’t looked him in the face since the whole thing had been resolved. He had thought it was because of what she had done, or maybe his comment, but maybe it was this, instead. “What did she say to you?”

“Nothing.”

Sometimes Jack wondered how Daniel survived in the real world, considering that his lying abilities were on par to those of a monkey. Or maybe a jellyfish. “Daniel. I need to know what she said.” And needed to not be so irritated over the fact that she had gone to Daniel instead of him—except of course she had gone to Daniel. He wasn’t her commanding officer, wasn’t military; he couldn’t do anything to her about making a statement like that, not really. Not that Jack would, but she had no way of knowing that.

Daniel sighed. “She asked me not to say anything to you.”

Of course she did. “Did she indicate that she’s afraid of—”

“Afraid of what, sir?”

Jack and Daniel both stiffened like schoolboys caught reading things they shouldn’t be reading, and damn, how had Carter snuck up on them like that? Though he hadn’t been paying as much attention as he should have been. Smoothly, he answered, “Afraid that you’ll lose to Teal’c in the next physical assessment.”

She shot him an odd look which, in hindsight, he probably deserved. “We all lose to Teal’c, sir.”

“Very true, Carter.” He turned to Daniel, who still looked like he was afraid of Carter pulling out a ruler to rap him in the knuckles with. “Bet’s off, then.”

Daniel blinked at him once, then said, “Okay. Hi, Sam.”

“Hi, Daniel.” She turned her attention back to Jack. “General Hammond wants to see you, sir.”

“Thanks, Carter.”

She nodded. “I’m going to go head to my lab. SG-4 just brought something back from P2X-979 that they want me to check out.”

“Have fun.”

Carter flashed a small smile, then turned and headed away. It had been a normal conversation, at least by their standards, but there had been a distance that had never been there before, not even in the beginning, and Jack couldn’t help but wonder if it was all his fault.


End file.
